Ruminations, May 20

* OK, IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn has really stepped in it this time.

I know, I know, innocent until proven guilty. But the mere arrest and charge has been enough to unearth a lot of not-too-deeply buried stuff about the same kind of behavior he’s been getting away with for some time now.

And why has he been getting away with it? Well for one, he’s French. For another, he’s socialist royalty.

Everyone else has said just about everything you can say on the subject. The French are really blase about this kind of behavior, socialists are really aristocratic snobs with a populist veneer, etc. All true, to be a socialist in this day and age requires an ability to believe things of breath-taking absurdity with passionate conviction.

It also requires rock-hard solidarity with fellow socialists when it comes to throwing the proletarians under the bus. But we always knew that. In DSK’s case, it appears that one victim’s own mother, a socialist politician, persuaded her not to make le scandale. Not from fear she’d be savaged by the French media, but pour la cause.

That young lady evidently was merely groped and had her clothes torn. I wonder what Maman would have said if she’d been actually raped, but then again maybe I don’t want to know. If her daughter had been forced to give DSK oral sex, as he allegedly forced the African maid, would she have used the Clinton defense “It’s not really sex”?

About the French… it’s difficult to say what les peuple think, as opposed to the aristos who own and run the media. There was that bit of a shocker when Roman Polanski was facing extradition a while back, when some policiticians had to back away a bit when they found that lo and behold, a majority of French actually supported sending him back to face trial among those barbarous Americains.

It does seem very evident that the aristos of La Belle France are shocked, shocked, to find the Americans actually believe that merde about “one law for the rich and poor alike,” however poorly we live up to it. (Chappaquidick ring a bell? Michael Kennedy and the 14-year-old babysitter?)

* The “adult baby,” 30-year-old Stanley Thornton Jr. has been living on disability. He’s 350 pounds and likes to wear diapers and be coddled by his long-term companion, who is evidently also living off public assistance.

This has to be seen to be believed. I was going to post a picture or a link, but I find I can’t bear to look at it again, so I’ll spare you. That’s one of those pictures I wish I could get out of my head.

I remember I heard about something called “baby play” when I was covering a Gay Pride march in Oklahoma City for a journalistm class. Also something called “bear play” which sounds weird, but not repulsive.

Do I have to say again that I don’t care what consenting adults do in private? I do reserve the right to my own opinion though, and speaking as a man who’s changed a lot of diapers in my time… no, I don’t want to go there.

What made this a public issue versus private kinkiness, is the fellow’s defiant, whining, insistence on his right to live on the dole. He threatens suicide if the public teat is removed.

“I have no problem killing myself. Take away the last thing keeping me here, and see what happens. Next time you see me on the news, it will be me in a body bag,” he said.

So here’s my question. What’s wrong with saying, “OK, everyone has the right to elect the time and manner of his own destruction. See you in the body bag”?

I mean that literally, what’s wrong with saying that?

* And on a related note, Leroy Fick, 59, won $2 million in the Michigan state lottery and still collects food stamps.

“If you’re going to try to make me feel bad, you’re not going to do it,” he said.

Of course we aren’t going to make him feel bad by pointing at him with scorn. He likes the attention. This is the same kind of in-your-eye to society I used to see in Warsaw where homeless people would defacate in the elevators installed in the underground walkways under busy intersections for the convenience of the handicapped and mother’s with baby carriages.

My question in this case is, would somebody like to make him feel bad with their fists please?